Surely, it’s a good chocolatier that makes good chocolate. But it’s a good taster who makes a good chocolate even better.

aste chocolate. Taste promiscuously. Taste alone and taste with friends. Taste plain chocolate; taste chocolate with raisins and nuts. Taste white chocolate, milk chocolate, and the very many percentages of the dark. Taste single origins; taste blends. Taste velvety soft truffles that instantly melt in your mouth. Taste pralines that you can bite off with a crunch. Taste gourmet chocolate and ask what the big deal is. Taste chocolate you’ve never tasted before and wonder what took you so long to try it. Taste chocolate. It’s a tall order. Are you up for it?

Chocolate is arguably the most popular food on the planet. Everybody loves it but very few are connected to what it is and how it’s made. Chocolate comes from the cocoa bean, which comes from the fruit of the cacao tree. The bean tastes nothing like chocolate, yet it is exactly where all that mind altering sexiness of chocolate comes from. In fact, the base of any good chocolate is simply cocoa beans and sugar. To connect people to that kind of simplicity and to show them how delicious that simplicity can be, and how complex it can be at the same time, is really an exciting opportunity. The large majority of chocolate consumed by us today is a construct of mass industrial production. But there is no machine that can tell you if your chocolate tastes good. Only you can be the judge of that.